“Just bring it off.” The commander’s lips twitched. “Whatever it is.”
Jeriah was still smiling as he led his troops out of the ditch.
Jogging back to the stables kept them too breathless for questions. When they entered the big building, Jeriah found that the men he’d sent on earlier had saddled not only their own mounts, but horses for most of the others. It took just a moment to get a bridle and saddle on Glory, who pranced uneasily as she sensed his tension.
“I have to tell you all,” said Jeriah, “this isn’t an escort, and it hasn’t been authorized by any commander. But the barbarians have Tobin.”
He kept his explanation short and succinct. They all knew it was Tobin who’d conceived this odd ambush in the first place, so the story didn’t take long.
“This is against orders,” Jeriah finished crisply. “In fact, coming with me might get you kicked out of the army when this is over.”
“When this is over, there isn’t going to be an army,” one of the Southlanders said. “We might as well go out fighting, instead of hiding in a ditch!”
The rumble of approval was almost a cheer, but some of Tobin’s friends looked troubled. A few of them, younger sons, had probably planned for a career in the sunsguard. But none of them said anything and Jeriah blessed them from the bottom of his heart. He needed them.
“Most of you don’t know what my brother looks like—and I should tell the rest that he’s been ill.”
Jeriah organized them into small units, three or four Southlanders paired with each man who knew Tobin well enough to identify the man they were supposed to rescue. When he was done, almost twenty men led their horses out of the stable and across the yard. At this point, Jeriah was more concerned about being seen by one of his own officers than the barbarians. But the orchard lay just beyond the manor’s gate, and the bright spring leaves soon hid them.
In a few more minutes they were staring through a screen of branches at the backs of Commander Sower’s troops. Those men were supposed to look like a loose perimeter guard, assigned to protect the gate from barbarian scouting parties without getting so close as to alarm the spirits.
Jeriah had agreed that the barbarians would be suspicious if the gate was completely unguarded. He’d also agreed that it should be possible for these men to allow themselves to be swept aside when the barbarian army charged, without too many dying in the process. He still thought the men who’d volunteered for that unit were the bravest he’d ever met.
He also understood why Commander Sower had turned away so many of the Southland volunteers. The men around him looked far too eager.
Jeriah turned to Daroo, who had moved from his perch on Jeriah’s shoulder to the back of Glory’s saddle.
“We’re set. Go tell Makenna she can start the spell.”
He could feel Daroo’s reluctance. The young goblin wanted to stay. He wanted to do more than carry messages. But Daroo, for all his youth, had been a soldier too.
“Aye.” He slid down the stirrup before Jeriah could give him a hand and headed toward the manor.
“Daroo?” Jeriah said impulsively. The boy turned. “Tell Makenna . . . tell her I can think of worse things to do with my life than helping heroes win.”
The way Daroo’s face brightened was reward enough, but as Jeriah settled back in the saddle, he realized that it was true. Without people like him, people who could deal with the consequences when the plan fell apart, the heroes could end up dead. That wasn’t going to happen here. Not if Jeriah could prevent it.
“Remember, we’re only here to grab Tobin and get out.” He kept his voice low, but all of Tobin’s friends, and even some of the Southlanders, nodded.
Jeriah looked at the men who hadn’t and was about to repeat himself when the light shifting through the leaves took on a silver cast. He turned toward the manor and gasped.
They’d been talking for weeks about how big this gate would be, but he hadn’t expected . . . It arced from one side of the field to the other like a rainbow, but its silver-blue light was a solid, swirling curtain that descended to the earth and blotted out the sky. Then it swirled itself clear to reveal another sky, half full of drifting clouds, while the sky over the Southlands behind it still showed clear.
The sight of those clouds brought home the reality of that alien world as nothing else had, and the back of Jeriah’s neck prickled at its strangeness. But he had no time for awe; a shout went up from Sower’s men as the barbarian army poured over the long, low rise that had concealed them.
They’d painted themselves for battle, clay-white skin, with spikes of stiffened hair framing screaming faces. They surged across the fields like the froth of a great wave, and the thunder of thousands of pounding hooves rolled over Jeriah. He was astonished when Sower’s men rushed out and formed a line in front of that charge instead of running away—he wouldn’t have blamed them!
But admiration and his own terror both took second place to frantically scanning that oncoming mob for his brother. Jeriah hadn’t imagined there’d be so
many
of them, and picking out an individual face in that jostling tide seemed impossible.
They completely filled the long fields as they approached Sower’s line, and more barbarians were riding from behind the hill when the battle began.
Jeriah, still trying to pick Tobin out of the mass, tried to ignore the clang of metal on metal, the shouts of anger and pain. Some of the Southlanders shifted restlessly.
“Where’s Tobin?” he shouted at them. “Look for my brother, curse you!”
The sounds of battle were fading, almost as swiftly as they’d begun. Jeriah saw scattered groups of Realm knights staggering off to one side of the battlefield or the other, He was relieved, in the small corner of his mind that wasn’t furiously searching the sea of white-painted faces, that the warriors let them go. The barbarians headed with single-minded purpose for the great gate.
The leading edge of the barbarian force rode through. Jeriah could see them galloping onward in that other world, clearing the way for others to follow, claiming that alien place. They were probably almost as responsible as the spirits for its creation. They deserved whatever fate they—
“There!” Trevenscourt shouted. “There he is!”
One brown head in all that mob, one unpainted face. Tobin was easy to see, but Jeriah’s heart sank: The entire width of the barbarian army surged between him and his brother, and Tobin’s guards were leading their captive’s horse at the same brisk canter as their own. They were halfway to the gate already.
There was nothing he could do except try.
“Go!” Jeriah clapped his heels to Glory’s sides, and his whole troop launched themselves out of the concealing trees and into battle.
If the barbarians had cared about killing them, they’d probably all have died in the next ten seconds. Once he was inside the moving mass of men and horses, Jeriah realized that all the barbarians were focused on the shimmering curtain ahead of them.
The only time barbarians even launched a blow at him was when he got in their way. Jeriah thanked the Bright Gods for Glory’s agility and guided her through the charging mob like a sheepdog through its flock.
Most of the Southlanders had fallen behind, fighting with small knots of barbarians. Jeriah hoped the fools had the sense to quit before they got themselves killed. A flash of guilt, for thrusting them into the position Commander Sower had tried to keep them out of. But most of Jeriah’s attention was fixed, not on Tobin, but on reaching the place at the opposite side of the field that Tobin and his guards would have to pass in order to enter the gate.
Glory leaped aside from one determined rider’s path, only to put Jeriah in front of another, who cursed and lifted his sword. Jeriah traded several blows with the man. Then one of Tobin’s friends, who were still clinging doggedly to his heels, swept in and launched a blow at the barbarian’s unprotected head that toppled the man from his saddle.
Jeriah didn’t know or care if the barbarian died. He spun his horse, looking frantically for his brother. Tobin and his guards were almost to the place where Jeriah had hoped to intercept them. If they passed it . . .
He shouted, and Glory sprang forward once more. But there were too many rough-coated horses, too many barbarians in his path.
Jeriah saw one barbarian raise a bow, aiming at the huddle of priests gathered on each side of the gate. His warning shout died as another barbarian swung a sword that almost cut off the archer’s arm. The priests who held that gate were the safest people on the battlefield, as long as that gate stayed open.
But what about Tobin? Did his guards have orders to kill him if it looked like he might escape? That was horribly possible, but Jeriah couldn’t do anything about it.
One of Tobin’s friends cried out as his horse stumbled and went down, rolling among the pounding hooves. Jeriah set his teeth and pressed on. He had only a hundred yards to go, but that ground was packed with a moving mass of bodies. Tobin and his guards were almost at the interception point.
He wasn’t going to make it. Even as he pounded his heels against Glory’s heaving sides, despair swept over him . . . and one of the barbarian horses began to buck, right in front of Tobin’s guards.
A hail of stones erupted from the bushes and vines on that side of the field, and the lumpy goblins they called Stoners tumbled out of the underbrush to keep it from impeding their aim.
Jeriah shouted encouragement and urged Glory forward again, but Tobin’s guards had recognized the danger.
They cut away from the goblins, away from the small, stubby arrows that were stampeding horses and even bringing down a few riders. The Stoners worked with deadly accuracy, and one of Tobin’s guards dropped unconscious from the saddle. But the others dragged Tobin out of the goblins’ range. It brought them closer to Jeriah, but they were also closer to the gate.
Tobin’s friends had been pulled away, leaving Jeriah on his own, but the mob was beginning to thin. He was now galloping toward the gate, moving with the crowd, so the going was easier. But the barbarians who led Tobin’s horse were moving faster too.
Tobin’s wrists were tied to the saddle pommel and his ankles to the stirrups. He was so near the gate that its silver light illuminated the horror and despair on his bruised face.
Jeriah was too far off to stop them, but he was close enough to see a small form—hardly larger than a rabbit—that darted through the avalanche of pounding hooves and leaped to grab the saddle girth as Tobin’s horse ran by.
Daroo clung to the strap for several long moments. Then Tobin’s horse bucked and shrieked and its saddle slipped sideways, carrying Tobin with it as the severed girth dumped him in a tangle of leather straps.
His wrists were still bound, but that didn’t stop Tobin from rolling up and flinging first the sturdy saddle and then himself over Daroo’s fragile body.
They were less than twenty feet from the glowing gate. Barbarians raced past with a heedless haste that could trample a fallen man, much less a small-boned goblin boy.
One of Tobin’s guards rode on through the gate, but two turned back. Jeriah’s worst fears were realized when, still mounted, one of them drew his sword and prepared to bring it down on Tobin’s exposed neck.
But the mob had thinned even more. Jeriah shouted as Glory charged forward and knocked the smaller horse off its feet.
Tobin cried out in protest as hooves tramped and thudded around him, but he didn’t move from the crouch that sheltered his savior. Jeriah reined Glory around between Tobin and the last mounted guard.
The man who’d fallen when Glory toppled his horse looked at Jeriah, then looked at the gate and exclaimed in alarm.
The gate had begun to waver, silver flooding in spinning wisps over their view of the Spiritworld.
Clutching his ribs, the barbarian staggered to his feet and ran for the Spiritworld. His mounted companion had already made the same choice and beaten him through. The handful of barbarians who remained shouted and urged their horses to a gallop.
Peering into that strange world, Jeriah saw the leading edge of the barbarian army stagger and slow, as if their horses had stumbled into a bog. But the area around them didn’t look like marshland.
The few barbarians who remained on this side of the gate didn’t care about the terrain on the other side. None of them wanted to waste time fighting Jeriah, rushing instead to follow their comrades as the gate flickered and dimmed.
But it wasn’t till the last of them had hurtled through that the great portal shimmered and winked out.
Jeriah thought he heard a distant echo, as if an immense clap of thunder had sounded in that other world so briefly connected to his. But then it was gone, and Jeriah tumbled off Glory’s back and knelt beside his brother.
Tobin sat up too slowly, and his battered face had lines in it Jeriah hadn’t seen before. But the urgency with which he struggled to lift the saddle was pure Tobin.
“Hold still,” said Jeriah. He cut Tobin’s wrists loose, then lifted the heavy saddle aside.
Daroo had been crouched beneath it, in much the same posture Tobin had assumed above, but he was already stirring when Jeriah raised the saddle.
“Are you all right?” Daroo asked Tobin. “Fa said you weren’t in any condition to go down rough, so we tried to find another way to stop you. But toward the end I didn’t see another choice. Are you all right?”
Tobin looked from Daroo to Jeriah, and his eyes filled with tears.
“I’m fine,” he whispered. “I’m better than fine, now.”
Tobin was also leaning against his brother so heavily, Jeriah was pretty sure he couldn’t sit up on his own.
“No, you’re not,” Jeriah said. “Of all the idiotic, ridiculous . . .”
But someone else was approaching, and one look at the dread in Makenna’s face distracted him.
“He’s fine,” Jeriah told her. “Or at least he’s alive, so he’ll be fine eventually. Thank you for making the gate waver like that. I’d have had a fight on my hands if you hadn’t.”
“It wasn’t hard.” She was pale, her short hair wet with sweat. Looking past her, Jeriah saw that most of the priests who’d cast the gate were sitting down, and those who weren’t were lying down. He deduced that creating the largest gate anyone had ever considered—let alone attempted—hadn’t been easy.